The Shearing Cross
by scifigrrl
Summary: Aaron & Marta face their past as they prepare to move forward, together. Aaron Cross and Marta Shearing immediately following the final scene in "The Bourne Legacy".
1. Above Deck

The Shearing Cross (The Bourne Legacy Continued)

The fishing trawler continued on its path, farther into a short safety for the two passengers on board, Aaron Cross and Marta Shearing. Aaron rolled up the map he had just been studying in response to Marta's comment that she wished they were lost. She smiled at him, meeting his questioning and pleasantly surprised look, but then shyly glanced down at her hands as she nervously folded them together and extended them on the table they shared. She was unable to resist another look to gauge his reaction to her suggestive statement that had included the potentially hazardous word "we". She found him leaning back in his chair smiling directly back at her, almost smugly.

Martha held his gaze, unashamed, until his confident intensity stared her into a blush and she refocused on her hands clasped before her. She sensed him leaning forward before she saw his one big right hand overtake both of hers together. Marta felt a happy relief and looked back to Aaron with an undeniable fondness. His own smile had softened and they enjoyed an extended moment in silent admission of the new intimacy shared between them.

Aaron felt almost gleefully satisfied at the beautiful, blushing green eyes Marta revealed to his own perceptive blues. _Finally_, he thought. "Four years and you finally see when you look at me", he said, still smiling but serious.

"I saw you", she replied, frowning slightly.

"Oh, you saw me plenty", he smirked in jest. "But you wouldn't see me, no matter how hard I tried. You looked through me; straight to the cells in my body and the synapses in my brain. Just a medical scientist analyzing her subject." Then, because her smile had dimmed, he added more gently, "Now we see each other."

Marta ignored his last comment, her irritation growing. "It wasn't allowed, and it wouldn't have been proper. You were the patient and I was your doctor. I wasn't cold, as you infer", she said defensively, "just appropriately professional. I warned you we were on camera. I had a job to do which you continually tried to undermine."

"For damn good reason if I had been", he interjected emphatically. Aaron sat up rigidly, taking his hand with him, his smile gone. Her hands abandoned, Martha pulled them back and folded her arms across her chest. It was an unconscious action guarding herself from the root of his objection. They sat quietly in their own thoughts with only the sound of waves softly smacking the boat.

Looking off distantly into the ocean but seeing the past, Marta eventually spoke reflectively, "I could tell almost right away you were different. I remember thinking you were so self-assured, self-aware and confident." She paused and added, "Cocky, really". She smiled at him briefly then continued, "You took to the enhancements with greed. That's the term I wrote in your file 'with greed'. Now I understand why; but then, I felt the need to handle you with caution. As time went on you became increasingly combative with the process...". At that, an indignant noise issued from Aaron and he pushed himself away from the table without rising from the chair.

"I only meant that I knew you were dangerous", Marta tried to explain, puzzled by his movement.

"You thought I was a danger to you?" his brow furrowed, not inquisitively, but pointedly. His head was cocked as if to gauge her reaction, and he wore an odd look of calculation that worried her. There was purpose behind the leading question.

Aaron's intent was to draw from Marta a full realization of her former role at Sterison-Morlanta and Outcome, not to punish her, but for closure. He knew she needed both a clean break and slate from her former life to begin a new, very different one.

"No, of course not", she replied, thrown off by what she took as an accusatory tone. "Yes, you needled me with 'attractive appearance' comments, but I understood you were just being rebellious. I didn't take you seriously." Aaron coughed an offended laugh that Marta didn't quite catch.

"I didn't take you seriously as a personal threat, no. I understood you were a danger, not to me-you weren't programmed for that kind of violence-to the program itself", she began to stammer, slightly confused. "For the experiment's integrity and the success of Outcome, you needed to be controlled."

"By you?" he asked, his eyebrow arched and expression hard.

Marta sat back abruptly in her seat, her lips partly opened by a slightly stunned surprise, on his line of questioning and the abrupt turn their conversation had taken. Breathing back deeply a bit of hurt, she replied, "I thought we were past this, Aaron."

"We are", he nodded once. "I hope we are. But, like your house, you need to set the blaze; burn the past."

"Oh, I've burnt my past", she retorted. "My life is in ashes. You've made it clear I can't go back. And you're right; I know it. I'll be killed if I return to the work I've spent a lifetime preparing for, all my training, all my skills wasted. I sacrificed so much for that job, for science."

"Yeah, me too", Aaron muttered bitterly.

Thinking he was belittling her loss, Marta said through a clenched jaw, "It was my entire existence, my top priority." She thought of Peter and the choice she had made between her career and a life as his wife. "My job was the love of my life. My work is who I am. So now I am no one and I, quite literally, have nothing."

Marta allowed herself a few moments of grief to mourn the life taken from her, under force. Aaron sat quietly watching her, waiting for the horror of her words to sink in to her consciousness. When she finally looked up at him there was no understanding dawning, just self-centered sorrow by his estimation.

Dumbfounded by his look of tempered disgust, Marta demanded, "What?"

Aaron repeated her words "My work is who I am. My job was the love of my life." He faced her squarely as he asked, "_That _job was you? _That _work, you loved?"

Marta blinked back at him for an uncomprehending second. Then, as the full meaning of her comments was finally reasoned out by her disoriented thinking, she was stricken. Aaron's implication felt like a denunciation leveled at her personally and it stung. Her identity was tied to her work, and she had loved it. She had felt proud of her accomplishments, of her ground-breaking work. Marta felt the boat's deck lurch. "I suddenly feel very seasick", she said shakily, as a wave of dizzying nausea hit. Aaron reached to steady her.

"I felt the same way once, back in Iraq", Aaron said with true empathy. "Seasick on desert ground." His blue eyes squinted, as if peering into a scene under a blinding desert sun.

"For a split second I thought I had gotten caught in quicksand." He paused to shake the stubborn memory from his mind; the haunting feel of being sucked down to hell alive. "I wish I could tell you the guilt eventually fades away, but it doesn't. We'll live with it and let it mold us for the better." Aaron hoped she would recognize the plurality in his last statement and what he meant by saying it.

The churning in Marta's stomach was replaced with an anger that seemed to uncoil and intensify unreasonably. In retaliation, she lashed out at what she thought was Aaron's scathing, condescending reprimand of her. "_My_ guilt?", her offended voice asked as she pulled away from him. "_I_ didn't kill anyone."

When Marta could see the unmerciful pronouncement register in Aaron's countenance, she continued. "You volunteered for Outcome. Although, maybe you couldn't read the contract telling you that they were going to make you a governmental hit man. Or perhaps, only after enough blue pills could you understand that murder is bad?"

Martha managed to register Aaron's subconscious lean forward to an attack stance on the balls of his feet, fists clenched and arms flexing in battle readiness. Rather than taking heed, this reminded her of the cruel truth she had to fling at him. Aaron's direct condemnation of her part in Outcome was even more painful than the guilt she would not yet face fully, though it was poised to possess her. She turned on Aaron, who had awakened and empowered it.

"My guilt," she restated, but deflected, fighting the words. "What about your guilt, Aaron? Have you really let it mold you for the better? Lethally defending yourself against other agents I can understand, but I seem to remember at least one innocent guard you killed in cold blood, just two days ago, viciously snapping his neck." She watched him, expecting to feel triumphant, or at least mollified.

Aaron's face held unconcealed hurt with an unsettling look of self-inflicted damnation. All of Marta's previous feelings fell, and she would have willingly sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor with them.

"Oh, s**t", she said, shaken by the ruthlessness of her rant. Too late, her fingers had covered her mouth then, without bidding, they reached for Aaron as if to thwart his inevitable retreat. Marta choked out his name "Aaron..." to stop him, as he left for the solitude of the crew's empty quarters below deck. Marta sunk back into the seat at the table, heavy with remorse. She hung her aching head in her hands, and succumbed completely to the guilt that flooded her.


	2. Superstructure

Marta wasn't sure how much time had passed since Aaron left. It couldn't have been much more than ten minutes, but she could not bear her guilt a minute more. Marta felt her forehead lying hard on the table that she had shared with Aaron. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, and saw the maps he had weighted with various nautical pieces. The chart Aaron had rolled up had fallen off the table and was now pinned against the inside hull of the ship by the ocean breeze, threatening to disappear over the edge of the railing.

The overwhelming guilt that had overtaken her squeezed Marta's lungs as she thought of Aaron and recalled the affectionate, knowing look they had so intimately shared between them. What had happened? She remembered everything but didn't want to.

Marta swallowed to choke down the emotion burning her throat and took a haggard breath. She leaned back to prop her elbows on the table and pushed her hair from her face but cradled her head in her hands while she recovered. She wondered if all the terror and trauma of the last few days had contributed to her outburst. Either way, she admitted to herself, she deserved her wretchedness.

"Oh, god", she groaned, grimly preparing to face Aaron. Marta couldn't begin to imagine how to apologize. The fact that the most horrific thing she had said to Aaron was an awful truth made it even worse. She _had_ been disturbed by him killing the guard. But how could she have ever mentioned it to him, basically naming him a murderer? His actions had saved their lives. And she had helped develop the chemicals that would program his mind to follow killer instincts; to succeed at all cost.

The former Dr. Shearing took another deep breath, pulled herself up, and turned towards the ship's quarters. Hesitating, she first retrieved the map from the deck and took it back to the table where she spread it out on top of the other charts and replaced the heavy objects to hold them all down. Marta looked it over and couldn't help but think maybe Aaron would have found them a hideout somewhere on this map where they could have been lost to all but each other. Even if it had only been for a day or two, she wished desperately they had. It would never happen now.

She felt the constricting pain in her chest again and she could feel tears forming in her eyes. Marta looked up into the sun, trying to burn them dry. Still having no idea what to say, she willed her feet forward to approach Aaron in the rusting gut of the ship.

The heavy metal hatch into the fishing trawler's small superstructure had been secured in an open position. Attached to the bulkhead was a flimsy screen door. Marta resolutely stepped through, her head ducking for clearance. She could hear the captain and his small crew in the wheelhouse, chattering in Filipino. Aaron would understand most of what they were saying.

Marta knew how much she needed him to manage even a most basic survival. In their circumstances, Aaron's set of skills were critical and she was not too proud to acknowledge how hopeless she would be without him. But that wasn't her motive in seeking him out now. Her eyes adjusted to the lower light and she hoped he wasn't in the engine compartment where an apology could not be heard. If he was, she figured all she could do was fling herself at his feet and beg his forgiveness. Actually, she considered, that might be easier than having to address him with simple words that could not fully convey her remorse.

Marta climbed down into the dank substructure of the ship, with access to the dingy engine room and a very cramped crews quarters. There was no door to the quarters. No one stayed there except when caught out at sea in bad weather. The owner rarely took the fishing trawler farther than a day's work worth of distance so the tiny bunks were primarily used for storage. Aaron and Marta had slept on deck under the tarpaulin cover while the captain and his son had stayed in the bridge.

Tension mingled with the musty, oily air of the boat's bowels. Marta sensed Aaron's presence in the crews quarters so she looked with foreboding to the opening port-side at the end of the short passageway. Aware of not much more than her own pounding heart, Marta stepped forward and paused at the room's entrance.

Aaron was standing a few steps away, his arms bracing himself against the cot side of a bunk's ledge. His head hung, eyes closed, the muscles in his bare back taut. The bandage she had wrapped around his arm was coming undone. Doctor training impelled Marta to draw closer and trembling hands tightened the cloth, noting a new stain of fresh blood. Marta wondered at what had opened the wound when his cells could repair and regenerate so rapidly. She tended to him warily, like she would a wild wounded animal, but Aaron stood without moving and unresponsive.

Marta moved behind him, uttering a weak "Aaron..." that sounded awkward to her ears.

Aaron's body was bowed slightly forward, drawing long breaths that expanded his rib cage so close before her. Marta placed a tentative hand on his back, dreading his recoil. Relieved when he did not, she rested her forehead on the arch of his spine. Marta filled her lungs filled with his scent, steadying herself against him.

"I'm so sorry", she began more audibly. "I never should have said...I didn't mean that...", she stammered. Marta sighed in frustration at being unable to formulate an appropriate apology. Resigned to the fact she would never be able to properly relay her remorse, she gave up trying to find the right words and now wished only to console him.

Marta brought her other hand up to risk a nervous caress. "I'm so sorry", she whispered as her palm and trailing fingers slid slowly down his slick skin from shoulder to waist.

Aaron's back had stilled under her touch as he involuntarily held his breath at feeling the gentle stroke down his flesh. Grateful for any response, Marta pulled back her forehead from against the curved line of his vertebrae and replaced it with lips that lingered against him, unsure, before finally forming a hesitant kiss. After a long moment, Aaron's head lifted and he sighed deeply, sounding defeated.

Marta raised her head to speak, and his rose slightly to absently stare straight ahead as he listened. "Please forgive me," she pleaded, pressing her left temple between his shoulder blades.

"You saved my life. I know we would not be alive without your actions. I have no right to condemn you for following a protocol I programmed into your instincts. If you killed, it was by my design; by the accomplishments of my sick work. And you're right; I was so proud," her voice wavered. "So brilliant, so driven, making men machines and refusing to learn for what purpose." Her mouth dry, Marta's tongue swept over her lips to continue. They tasted of Aaron.

"You were right; I wouldn't see you. I didn't want to know you." Then she admitted, "I didn't want to hear you."

Marta slid her arms around him, half expecting him to extricate himself from her embrace, yet unable to stop herself. If she had kept him at a safe distance then, she wanted him in dangerous proximity now. Aaron Cross was deadly, but she had been instrumental in making sure he was. It was her passion to perfect the process, even while he rebelled against it. With Aaron a witness against her, there was no denying it: "I am the monster here, not you."

Marta felt more peaceful, just accepting this aloud and facing the truth of what she does, of who she is. _No_, she thought, correcting herself, _what I did, who I was_. _Oh_. Burn the past, just as Aaron had said. Lost momentarily in her personal revelations, Marta was now thrilled to find that Aaron was now standing upright, his hand over hers their fingers entwining. They had been in a very similar position before, on the motorcycle. There was a mutual recognition shared between them of the familiarity in the affectionate gesture.


	3. The Hull

Shadows of Kenneth had always been cast over the new existence of the man now Aaron Cross. These usually manifested themselves as disconnected memories or a sense of emotion without the feeling. Marta's embrace and comforting kiss had brightened the darkness still clutching at Aaron from Kenneth's old miseries.

Abandoned by his alcoholic mother at an early age, he had lived with a grandfather who had suffered dementia years before the state finally deemed him unfit to raise an already challenged child. He was then lost in the chaotic crowd of disturbed youth at the state home.

Kenneth had suffered neglect, isolation and a frightening emptiness. Plagued his entire sad life with a desperate longing for care and some amount of genuine concern, Kenneth had survived by dreaming of family, of love. He had believed someday he would have both, and that faith had given him hope.

The young Kenneth Kitsom's only fond memory was watching old patriotic war movies his oblivious grandfather had played without end. The noble cause of the armed forces and its comradeship was a siren call that promised to fulfill his need of belonging. Private Kitsom did not last long on the battlefield, but had found enough of a home in the army to fight being discharged. He was the perfect candidate for Outcome. He accepted their offer to join, without question, feeling only joyful eagerness.

Aaron could not think of Kenneth's life as his own past. He had been reborn a completely different person; he was Aaron Cross. Yet the yearning of young Kenneth Kitsom to belong and find a true home still lingered. Marta's words and her body's warmth were a balm for wounds inflicted on an earlier self. Aaron felt that relief though the injuries had long since scarred over.

Marta's pronouncement that she was the monster, not him, had soothed Aaron more deeply than he thought possible. But if he had led her to face culpability, with the intent to overcome it, he must as well.

"No", he said. "I'll own it; I am a killer."

Marta started saying "No", and began the same shushing she had consoled him with when he was viraling out and very ill. Aaron recalled his feverish head drooping to her shoulder and into her care, her fingers running through his hair in comfort. He brought the delicate hand he held up and kissed it.

Aaron turned to face her and said again, "I am a killer." Marta's eyes took in his confession with concern. "Every day since Iraq I wake up promising myself I will never kill again. It's a promise I can't keep. Worse, it's a promise I know I _won't_ keep. I wish I could," he sighed, returning her gaze with a weary, resigned look.

He continued, gravely telling her, "I see the face of every person dead by my actions even before I make it out of bed. That guard I killed? He was married; wearing a ring." He paused, looking up to the ceiling as if begging forgiveness, his face penitent. "Thanks to the enhancements, I see too much of their lives clearly."

Aaron paused then added, "And exactly how I took it from them. I remember it all; and torture myself with it later. I replay the scenes in my mind over and over, looking for ways to disarm or disable without death. Then I train both body and mind to use those methods instead. It helps, but it doesn't cure." He shrugged with heavy shoulders.

"Six months ago, any police officers, guards, and even bystanders that were hampering the success of my mission would've been neutralized along with any target or operative. I know it doesn't make up for killing anyone in the first place, but I honestly don't know what more I can do. I have to believe that I'm slowly, but surely, taking myself back." Aaron paused, thinking, then said "Or more accurately, taking back control of myself."

Marta took his face in her hands, to focus him on her, not his suffering. "You are." She brought his head down to hers so that their foreheads were touching.

"It's really remarkable; you're altering your programming," she observed. "You've already accomplished so much more than should be possible. It must take an incredible amount of strength to override the killer instinct we basically downloaded into your behavior." Her hands slipped to his chest and her expression darkened as she said introspectively, "Scientists ignoring ethics; doctors doing harm."

A chastened Marta looked up into Aaron's big, penetrating blue eyes and said, a bit formally, "I deeply regret my part in the Outcome program; for what I've done to you."

"You've helped me, too," Aaron interjected. "You've saved me both mentally and physically." He remembered full well that it was Marta who took out the merciless Larx agent and ultimately saved them both. _A warrior indeed_, he thought to himself with a wry smile. Outcome training would have deemed Marta a liability to dispose of immediately after her usefulness was over. Rejecting that course had been his salvation in more ways than one.

"But while I was shoving aside doubts to keep the work going, you faced yours and had the courage to rebel. I fought against my conscience, you fought _for_ yours. In that exam room, you demanded I look. But you're right; I didn't want to see. So I promptly put you under," she smiled shyly.

This time it was Aaron who took her face in his hands to focus her on him. "But you see me know", he said with his intense confidence restored. He lowered his head, resolutely bending towards her.

Marta's green eyes were shining, bright and new. "We see each other," she returned, repeating Aaron's words back to him, before her lips met his. _Finally._


	4. Overboard

Aaron had to admit there was a distinct benefit to being hunted with little possibility of survival. He recalled the Buddhist proverb of the tigers and the strawberry. Here he and Marta were, hanging by the last fiber of a failing vine above a chasm of inevitable destruction. Relentless tigers paced impatiently above, anxious to pounce and devour them at any opportunity. Escape was impossible, death loomed. Yet here they were relishing the unexpected gift of a wild strawberry, made infinitely more sweet by their precarious position. Moved by the sobering reflection, Aaron's mind took control of his consciousness, ending the precious minutes of passionate oblivion.

Marta sensed the change and broke their meld reluctantly, sighing gently. Remorseful, Aaron knelt and rested his forehead against hers, keeping her close while his thoughts launched forward on multiple courses, calculating. They stood together in the dank quarter, bodies still pressed close but the previous hunger shared was slowly subsiding. It wasn't long before Marta, too, was thinking of their dire situation with a growing desperation to solve it. Her analytical mind probed their recent past for answers while Aaron's mind searched out possible futures.

Aaron pulled back and groaned, "Sorry. I need to check out those maps on deck. We need a plan."

Marta straightened, squaring her shoulders. She looked up at him with a nod, and released him from their embrace to step back slightly. "I was hoping we would be lost for a lot longer," she said, a sorrowful smile on bruised lips.

Aaron felt a twinge of anger at having to leave her now. "We'll beat this," he said gripping her arms, his piercing eyes burned. Marta again nodded, staring back at him with a mixture of trust and tenderness. Amid all the chaos of the last few days, she had wisely followed his directions without question. At the time, it was essential to her survival. She had not hesitated at all but instinctively relied on him with her life. Aaron felt the weight of responsibility not as a burden but an honor. The soldier in him steeled with determination, all he needed was a mission. He pulled her close and kissed her quick but strong and with feeling before walking with purpose out of the room to the steel ladder.

Aaron stopped at two steps up when Marta stepped through the bulkhead. Bright sunlight filtered down the superstructure, illuminating him as he peered back at her. Marta stood breathless seeing her mighty guardian perched mid-climb, his blue eyes almost transparent in the light. She suddenly felt inadequate and unworthy of his protection. Under his intent gaze, she worried he was drawing a similar conclusion.

Marta was barely distinguishable to Aaron among the shadows of the lower hull. The restored sunlight streaming down into his eyes would have blinded normal sight, making it impossible to see her at all. Even with his enhanced sight, all he could make out was her face, arms and legs because of the black shirt she wore. His shirt. Aaron felt an impulse to drop down and take her back deeper into the shadows with him. He wanted to stay with her in the safety of darkness and ignore the fact that there really was no safety for them anywhere.

Marta walked forward blinking, her green eyes adjusting to the light, until they found his. She placed her hand over his which he immediately took up in his grasp. He could see she struggled to speak so he squeezed her hand to reassure her, thinking she doubted they could survive. "We _will_ beat this," he reiterated. But Marta closed her eyes and shook her head.

"You could beat them," she said. "Or at least escape and live out your life. In freedom-if you're free of me."

"No," Aaron shook his head dismissing the suggestion emphatically. "Absolutely not. We're in this together now. I wouldn't have made it this far without you." He shrugged his shoulders as a gesture underlying a plain and simple fact. "And I won't go further without you either."

Marta's brows furrowed. "But..."

"No," he cut her off. "You should've left me in the hotel room, but you didn't. You refused to leave me when I was vulnerable and I refuse to leave you vulnerable."

"Exactly - I'll _always_ be vulnerable. I know I'm a great liability for you," she said, looking away from him. "You don't need medication - you're locked in. I would endanger you just by being there in your way or, at best, in tow, slowing you down. When it comes to you, my conscience weighs heavy enough already."

Aaron swung to the side of the ladder to face her directly, without the metal rungs between them, but she continued, her eyes still downcast. "You've already rescued me and gotten me out of immediate danger. If you felt a sense of duty to see me to safety, you've accomplished that."

Marta hesitated, unable to think of another way to express herself without using a line she was reluctant to use. Giving up, she then whispered, "You've done enough for me." She couldn't keep from blushing at the reference to their exchange in the hotel room; their intimacy was still so new.

"Then we've come full circle; you wouldn't leave me then, and I won't leave you now," Aaron repeated. "We're in this together."

"I will drag you down," she said simply, meeting his gaze.

He didn't deny it. "We'll manage."

"Then I'll be the death of you," Marta said flatly.

Aaron stared down at her for a while, conveying his full awareness of the ominous weight in his next statement. "We live through this together, one way or another. Or we die together trying to."

Aaron was willing to die for his country, but it had betrayed him. _Well_, he corrected himself, _a corrupt_ part_ of his beloved America had._ Now he was willing to die for this woman who hadn't forsaken him, but he certainly wasn't planning on dying. He wanted to live out a life _with_ her. Aaron's mind began to refocus on the multiple options and plans that might work for just that outcome. Before he completely ascended the ship's ladder to the uncertain future above, he leaned down to Marta's solemnly serene face as if to seal his declaration and commitment with a kiss that lingered.


End file.
